Balkans

All war crimes trials must be public, as well as the full names of the perpetrators, while the current practice of ‘anonymisation’ of suspects should end, a conference in Sarajevo heard.

The budgets of Bosnia’s two entities face trouble since a planned tranche of money from an IMF stand-by arrangement was blocked.

A hundred years on from the Sarajevo assassination, schools in former Yugoslav countries are teaching different histories about the causes of the 1914-18 war, reflecting more recent conflicts.

The trial of seven Bosnian Serbs charged with taking part in murders, illegal detentions, torture and other inhumane acts against Bosniaks and Croats in Kotor Varos will begin this month.

Nihad Bojadzic, the former deputy commander of the Bosnian Army’s Zulfikar Squad, said that he was not told about an attack on the village of Trusina, where 22 Croats were killed.

Several opposition parties in Republika Srpska have formed a united ‘Union for Changes’, which aims to take on the governing Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, led by Milorad Dodik, in Bosnia’s upcoming elections.

A three-metre statue of Pope John Paul II was unveiled in Sarajevo at a ceremony attended by thousands of Catholics and other citizens of Sarajevo.

A witness said that he saw Nedzad Hodzic, one of two Bosniak ex-servicemen on trial for wartime abuse of prisoners on Mount Igman, beating other detainees with a table leg.

The defence lawyer for Edin Dzeko, a former member of the Bosnian Army’s Zulfikar Squad, said he was not guilty of executing six Croats in Trusina in 1993.

People in the Brcko District marked the anniversary of the deaths of around 100 civilians who were killed in April 1992 when a bridge over the River Sava was blown up by Serb forces.